


Living Backwards

by methylviolet10b



Series: Looking-Glass Elevator [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Injury, Phobias, Violence, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 15:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1988670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Afterwards, Sally could only remember events in flashes. Written for JWP #19.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living Backwards

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: This is a continuation of [Oh Dear, Oh Dear](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1988649). If you haven't read that, this might not make much sense. And absolutely no beta. This was written in a huge rush. You have been warned.
> 
> JWP #19: Whump whump whump, yeah yeah yeah: Let's get back to our roots today, shall we? Whump Watson. Whump him well.

  
Afterwards Sally could only remember events in flashes, a surrealistic, almost abstract sequence of images that made very little sense.  
  
She remembered the pitch blackness that had engulfed them as she’d turned off the light from the last of the mobiles.  The broken lift had pressed in on her then, as it hadn’t seemed to do when they were simply trapped within its space. She sensed then a little of what Lestrade must have been coping with all that time, with his claustrophobia, and no way out.  
  
She had no memory of how much time passed between turning off the light and the sudden stabbing light from the direction of the lift doors. She didn’t know if she’d simply failed to hear the lift doors open, or if that memory was simply blotted out by the chaos that happened next.  
  
She had a flash of brief visual image, of the beam of light – from a torch, she knew now, although hadn’t then – alighting first, entirely fortuitously, on the prone Gregson.  
  
There was no sense-memory of pressing the camera button on the mobile. But she must have done it, because the next impression burned into her brain was of the entire lift lit up as if by a spotlight, including the man crouching on the other side of the now-opened lift doors, a torch held in one hand, a gun in the other, and a frozen look of surprise on his vaguely-familiar face. His emotion distorted his features, but Sally had enough practice in translating flat mug shots to real human faces to recognize him as Eric Raleigh. The second-in-command of the criminals they’d _thought_ they’d all caught in tonight’s sting.  
  
The near-darkness that fell after the flash waned was fixed in her memory for no good reason whatsoever. She knew the light from the torch remained, but it seemed weaker somehow as it jerked around, flitting.  
  
Her ears remembered the sound of the first shot, but there was no image that accompanied it, not that she could recall. Nor could she remember John springing up and grappling with the gunman, or Sherlock leaping into the fray, although she knew they must have done so.  
  
Instead, her next memory was of Lestrade, caught mid-air in the light of the wildly-waving torch as he leapt for the open door of the lift. His claustrophobia must have given him an incredible adrenaline surge, to make such a leap from his huddled seated position.  
  
She didn’t remember him crashing into the struggling threesome at the lift doors, but he must have done. She did recall the light of the torch disappearing entirely in the mass of writhing bodies, and the sound of the loud thump as they collectively tumbled to the floor of the lift.  
  
She remembered the pained grunt. She remembered the muffled second shot. No one cried out, or made any subsequent sound of pain, at least not that she had any memory of.  
  
Not until the harsh cracking sound, and a strangled scream wrenched from a male throat.  
  
Fumbling for the button that activated the mobile screen, the wash of blue-tinged light over the lift floor – that was impressed with perfect clarity. Then just flashes again:  
  
Gregson, still sprawled on the lift floor more or less where John had eased him down after his concussion, but now clutching one bloodied arm and moaning in pain.  
  
Sherlock, his face even more bruised and blood-streaked than it had been before she’d doused the lights, snarling in rage, almost demonic.  
  
Lestrade, rising to his feet, shaken and rumpled, the lines on his face even deeper with the effects of fighting his phobia for so long, a gun in his hand.  
  
Eric Raleigh, slumped over, clutching his balls, disarmed, no longer an immediate threat.  
  
And John, leaning against one lift wall, one hand cradling the opposite shoulder, skin blue-white. A dark stain matted his hair. Blood. Blood on his face. Blood on his jumper. Blood seemingly everywhere.  
  
John Watson, swaying, then crumpling to the floor like a broken toy dropped by a careless child.


End file.
